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Data types | Fact sheet | Samples
Quiz questions and fun facts: Sample amazing facts
Agricola
The illustrations of miners in Agricola's De re metallica/On Metals (1556) were used by Walt Disney as models for the
seven dwarves.
Aristophanes
When a military regime seized power in Greece in 1967, the satirical plays of Aristophanes were banned. Aristophanes had been dead for over 2,000 years, but the military government was still sensitive to his mockery of politicians.
astronaut
Astronauts in space cannot burp. It is gravity that causes bubbles to rise to the top of a liquid, so space shuttle crews were
forced to request less gas in their fizzy drinks to avoid discomfort.
koala: sleep
The koala sleeps on average 22 hours a day. It is the only animal more slothful than the sloth, which sleeps only 20 hours a day. Some say that the koala's diet of eucalyptus leaves means that it is in an almost permanently drugged sleep.
Newton, Isaac
Among the lesser achievements of Isaac Newton were his career as a member of Parliament for Cambridge University – in which capacity his only recorded words were a request for a window to be opened – and his invention of the cat-flap (for a pet cat he kept at Woolsthorpe House).
shark: oxygen
Sharks have to keep swimming to survive. The great white shark must swim constantly at about 3.5 kph/2.2 mph to ensure enough oxygen reaches its bloodstream. An immobile shark (or one dragged backwards) drowns.
slug
Slug slime is so viscous that a slug can crawl along a sharp razor blade without harm.
tortoise: Aeschylus
Aeschylus, the founder of classical Greek tragedy, is said to have died when an eagle passing overhead dropped a tortoise on his head.
trial
Animals were occasionally tried in court during the medieval period. In 1499, a bear was put on trial in Germany on a charge of
terrorizing local villages. The start of the trial was delayed when the defence lawyers pleaded that their client had the right to be tried by a jury of bears.
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